‘You Represent Peace,’ Bush Tells Olympic Team

Riding a wave of sentiments in red, white and blue, President Bush welcomed the Olympic Winter Games to the United States on Friday as an opportunity, in the midst of the world’s turmoil “to celebrate international peace and cooperation.”

At every turn during his visit here, including his meeting with the U.S. Olympic team, Bush brought up the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and pleaded for peace and unity.

“You represent a spirit much bigger than evil and terror. You represent peace,” Bush told the team members hours before they marched into Rice-Eccles Stadium for the opening ceremony. Three members of the New York-New Jersey Port Authority Police Department were at the meeting, along with the tattered U.S. flag found in the ruins of the World Trade Center.

The decision to carry the torn flag in the opening parade has been controversial, with critics saying the U.S. was placing too great an emphasis on American patriotism at an international sporting event.

Of the flap over the flag, Bush said: “The events are going to strike a proper balance between the patriotism that we all feel here and the international flavor of the Games.

“These Games come at a perfect time for us,” the president said, driving home his message that the Olympics will allow the U.S. to display for the world its unity and the value it places on freedom.

The time with the team seemed to come naturally to Bush. As a part-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team before he was elected governor of Texas in 1994, he mingles easily with athletes and calls himself a sportsman.

The team members, in their dark blue jackets over sky-blue sweaters with red-and-white trim, clustered in front of the president--who donned one of their jackets--and his wife, Laura. Behind them stood, among others, skier Picabo Street and skater Michelle Kwan.

The head of state of the host country traditionally opens the Games. With security at the Olympics heightened since the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush’s visit added yet one more challenge for the 10,000 law enforcement and military personnel on duty.

When President Reagan opened the Summer Games in 1984 in Los Angeles, he, like Bush, was atop a patriotic tide. He sent the athletes out to do their best with a stirring proclamation of “a new patriotism spreading across our country.”

“Do it,” he instructed them, “for the Gipper.”

That call reached back to one of his early movies, in which he played Notre Dame running back George Gipp in the movie “Knute Rockne--All American.”

At a time when his White House worked assiduously to promote patriotism in the post-Vietnam War era, Reagan used the Olympic Games as a stage to tell the athletes, and the country, that the spirit of Old Glory “is evident all across this land.”

Before the ceremony began, Bush attended a reception of Utah officials and others who helped bring the Games here. Echoing Reagan’s patriotic message but broadening it, Bush presented the Games as a lesson for the world in the post-Sept. 11 period.

“We believe that these ideals--liberty and freedom--make it possible for people to live together in peace. And the Olympics give the world a chance in the middle of a difficult struggle to celebrate international peace and cooperation,” he said.

“We love, we cherish and we will defend freedom at any cost.

“For centuries, the Olympics have reinforced an important lesson,” Bush said. “It’s an important lesson for today: No matter how wide our political or cultural differences may be, some things are valued and enjoyed the world over. All people appreciate the discipline that produces excellence, the courage that overcomes difficult odds, the character that creates champions.”

Bush arrived in Salt Lake City on Friday afternoon. At midday, he had spoken to the Cattle Industry Convention and Trade Show in Denver.

At the end of the day, he planned to fly to Jackson, Wyo., for a weekend visit at the vacation home of Roland Betts, a fraternity brother from his days at Yale University.